I am a photographer from East Hertfordshire/Essex/London. I started this blog to share some of my photography ideas and thinking. This blog is a mixture of my photography, thinking behind some photo shoots and some equipment reviews. The reviews are just my user experience and nothing more. My passion is portraits, editorial and fashion photography.
If you have any project that need a photographer, please get in touch. My website is at www.yattang.net

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Monday, January 21, 2013

As a photographer, I have shot most subjects. It started off with landscape, but I was tired of waiting for the light condition and all the early start and late finish. That was the reason I started to shoot portraits. Pregnancy is something I've not done before. It looks like a market a lot of photographers are trying to tap into. When I heard a model I shot with a few times before is pregnant, I thought it is a perfect opportunity for me to shoot some to add to my portfolio.

We kept in touch and arranged a date so her bump will be showing but made sure the date was not too close to her expected day. She have a few ideas to what she wanted and I did my research as well. Together, we came up with a few ideas together. On the day we came up with a shooting schedule and worked through them. They ranged from high key, low key and black and white images.

We wanted to go a little further and worked to implied topless and kept the images tasteful. After all, it is not a glamour shoot. Some of the black and white images came out really well and I like them a lot. They were cropped very tight to a letter box format which suit the image and made you concentrate on the important part of the photo.

I also took some images of Amber alone and as a couple. Images that you can hang on your wall, images that you can show anyone. The first two images on this page are quite intimate, some people may not want to share with strangers. Personally, I feel the last three images are ones you can show to anyone. I am now glad I've these photos in my portfolio.

Friday, January 11, 2013

Jade was another model that was interested in the "Mono" idea. I was really happy with the results I got with Eloise. Jade is a great model, so full of energy. Once I had the camera pointed at her, she was off, pulling pose after pose without direction.

She brought along a black and white outfit and we move to the padded cell set of the studio. It seemed strange at the time, but once I saw the test image on the back of the camera, I knew it looked just right. At first, she was standing, but I saw a interesting chair in the same room and decided it really does suit her clothing. Jade pulled many poses again and all I had to do was to press the shutter button. I ended up with so many great images, it was hard to chose the best. In the end, these are the images that I though are the best from our short session. I even tried one converted to black and white, but most people think the colour version is better.

Model: Jade Nunn
Makeup: Crystal Edwards

A black and white version of image above

We also manged to shoot a small number of images together again a plan background. I tell you, it is hard to take a bad photo of Jade. I thoroughly enjoyed working with her and I recommend her to anyone.

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

These images were the idea of Jean Fernand again. She is a makeup artist I've worked with on a number of shoots. The shoot should have happened in 2012, but due to a number of reasons, we never got to do it. During a group shoot at the weekend, we attempted to shoot it. We had Molly Louise as the model in the dungeon set of Dieselpunk Studio.

Again, Jean did a great job with the hair, makeup and styling. You can really go wrong when you have a great combination of makeup, styling and model. I increased the saturation and contrast for these images and I hope you like them.

A makeup artist I've worked with came up with this idea of "Mono". The concept was to use black and white clothing in black and white surrounding with makeup that enhances this look. I was happy to shoot this with her during a group shoot. The model was Eloise Turner, a model I've worked with before.

The first set of photos were taken against a white background shot with two speedlights set up by another photographer Paul Watkinson. A Canon 580EX in a beauty dish to the right and a Canon 430EX in a softbox to the left, triggered with Phottix Odin. I desaturated the images and added a slight vignetting.

Model: Eloise Turner
Makeup, Hair, Styling: Jean Fernand

The second set up was shot on a black and white check flooring. I believe these images are much stronger and much closer to the concept of "Mono". On the second image, I did have to change the colour of the blue wall and removed two ugly pictures that were on the wall. Lighting was very simple, only using my Strobeam DL4 with a shoot through umbrella.

Monday, January 7, 2013

I had this idea for a while
but only had the opportunity to do this at the weekend at a group shoot. I hung Christmas lights on the wall of the
studio we were shooting at the beginning of the shoot. Whenever someone has two minutes free, I had
them model for me.

The setup was very simple; I
had people stand about 1.5 meter away from the background lights. I lit them with a 160 LED panel light fitted
with a pink filter on a light stand just above head height. Due to the pink filter, I created a custom
white balance for this scene. I had to
turn the power up to maximum and turn off as much ambient lighting as possible
and shot with my Olympus E-PM2 with 45mm F1.8 lens at F1.8.

To maximise background blur, I got as close as possible to the subject and
fired away. The shutter speed was quite
low for the 45mm lens, but the in built image stablisation of the camera did
help. If I were to do this again, I will use a tripod for the camera and build a fixture to arrange the background lights in a predetermined pattern.